They say home is where the heart is.
How poetic. How sweet.
How utterly useless when you wake up in a bed that smells like someone else’s city,
when the walls don’t know your voice,
when the streets spit out syllables that trip your tongue.
Tell me—does this look like home to you?
A place where I walk like a stranger in my own shoes,
where my laughter is softer, measured,
where even my silence doesn’t sound quite right?
I sit in a room filled with my own things,
but they feel stolen, out of place,
as if I’ve broken into a life that wasn’t meant for me.
They smile at me, they nod, they talk.
So kind. So welcoming.
So oblivious to the weight I carry
when I pretend that their way of life is now mine.
Like it’s just that easy.
Like you can simply unzip yourself from the past
and slide into a new skin without bleeding.
Back home—
(ha, “home,” like it’s still mine to claim)
the air was warmer,
the sky softer,
the ground held me like I belonged.
Here, I am tolerated.
Accepted, even.
But belonging?
That’s a different kind of luxury.
So I go through the motions.
I drink their coffee. I learn their roads.
I adjust my mouth to their words,
wear them like second-hand clothes,
a little tight, a little loose, never quite fitting.
And I tell myself, maybe one day,
this place will stop feeling borrowed.
Maybe one day, I’ll wake up
and the walls will know my name.
But not today.
Not yet.
Maybe never.